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How the 

WORLD BEGAN 


UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME 


HOW THE WORLD GREW UP 

The Story o) Man 

HOW THE WORLD IS RULED 

The Story of Government 

THE WORLD OF ANIMALS 

The Story of Animals 

THE GARDEN OF THE WORLD 

The Story of Botany 

HOW THE WORLD IS CHANGING 

The Story of Geology 

THE WORLD’S MOODS 

The Story of the Weather 

THIS PHYSICAL WORLD 

The Story of Physics 

WHAT MAKES UP THE WORLD 

The Story of Chemistry 

OTHER WORLDS THAN THIS 

The Story of Astronomy 


Thomas S. Rockwell Company 
Publishers 
CHICAGO 








To My Grandfather 


Hoping that I 
may ta\e after 
him as all the 
prehistoric 
creatures in 
this hoo\ too\ 
after their 
grandpapas 



Early man had to be strong and quic\ in order to 
live at all 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


'By 


Edith 


i|iEAL 


err'tn 


Drawings by 
Don Nelson 



THOMAS S. ROCKWELL COMPANY 

CHICAGO 

I 93° 


Copyright, 1930, by 

THOMAS S. ROCKWELL COMPANY 

Chicago 



Printed in United States of America 


JUN 23 !930 

©CIA 24737 




CONTENTS 


I In the Beginning 15 

Where did the world come from? What 
was the earth li\e in the beginning? How 
were the oceans and continents formed? 
Why didn't the water wear away all the 
land? How old is the earth? What was 
the first living thing on earth? Where did 
life start? 

II The Stone Book 27 

What tells the story of the earth? Why are 
there layers of roc1(? What is a fossil? 
What are fossils li\e? What is “turning to 
stone?" What is the “mar\ of wings?" 
What are moulds? 

III The First Fish 39 

What were the earliest creatures to leave a 
record? What came before fishes? What 
was the first fish li\e? What was the bony 
fish? Who were the giants among the early 
fish? What were the lung-fish? 

IV The Fish That Walked 45 

How did the fish get ready to leave the 
water? Why did the fish come onto the 
land? What was the first step probably 
li\e? What was the first land-dweller? 
How do we hjiow these animals wal\ed? 


8 


CONTENTS 


What are the amphibians of today? What 
were the ancient amphibians like? Why 
were they chained to the water? Why was 
the amphibian a failure? 

V The Giant Monsters 53 

What creature first lived on land only? 
What were the reptiles li\e? What were 
the giant land reptiles li\e? What were the 
giant sea monsters like? What is the 
strange fact about a reptile’s teeth? How 
did the giant monsters protect themselves? 

Why did they disappear from the earth? 

VI The Reptile That Flew 67 

What were the flying dragons? What were 
their wings like? How big were the wings? 
What is the mystery of the flying dragons? 

VII The First Bird 73 

Who was its great-great-great-great-grand¬ 
father? How did the bird take after its 
ancestors? How was it unlike its reptile 
relatives? What were some of the ancient 
birds like? What has been the progress of 
birds? Is the bird better than the airplane? 

VIII The Smart Little Animal 81 

What new form of life made its appearance? 
What was its reptile relatives like? Who 
was the “underdog” in the Age of Reptiles? 

In what way were they superior to reptiles? 

Why was it that mammals a grew up?” 


CONTENTS 


9 


How did mammals prepare for their con¬ 
quest? How did the mammals get ahead of 
themselves? What did some of these mam¬ 
mals loo\ li\e? Who were the invaders that 
came to stay? What happened to the little 
horse? What is the elephant's history? 
What happened to the mammals that li\ed 
the water? What happened to the mammals 
that lifted to climb trees? What happened 
because the ape was bigger than the mon- 
\ey? Why was the ground walking ape 
important? 

IX The Coming of Man 99 

Has the missing lin\ between ape and man 
been found? What is the “dawn” man? 
What was the Heidelberg jaw li\e? Who is 
the Peking man? Who was the last of the 
men who bore the mar\ of the ape? Who 
was the true man? How do men follow the 
same line of progress as forms of life? 

X The Chaining of the Animals 103 

Why did the animals lose their power? 
What of the future? 



















LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


EARLY MAN HAD TO BE STRONG AND 
QUICK frontispiece 

THE SUN HAD BEEN TOSSING FIERY FOUNTAINS 16 

COUNTLESS BODIES SWARMED ABOUT THE 
EARTH 18 

ROCKS ARE IN LAYERS 22 

MUD SLOWLY TURNS TO ROCK UNDER WATER 28 
MANY ANIMALS WERE TRAPPED IN TAR POOLS 33 
TRUNKS OF TREES WERE TURNED INTO STONE 34 
A PALM LEAF PRINTED IN STONE 37 

LAZY SEA CREATURES BURIED THEMSELVES IN 
MUD 41 

FISH HAD PLATES OF BONE OVER THEIR BODIES 43 
REPTILES LEFT THE WATER FOR THE LAND 49 

THE DIPLODOCUS ATE FROM THE SWAMP BOT¬ 
TOMS 54 

SOME DINOSAURS WERE TREMENDOUS IN SIZE 56 
THE STEGOSAURUS LOOKED HORRIBLE 57 

MONSTERS ATE THE TREE TOPS 58 

ONE MONSTER WAS A BIRD CATCHER 59 

SEA MONSTERS LIVED IN THE OCEAN 63 

REPTILES LAY IN THE SWAMPS 66 

FLYING LIZARDS HAD WINGS LIKE BATS 69' 

BIRDS HAD FINGERS ON THEIR WINGS 70 

THE FIRST BIRDS WERE NOT EXPERT FLYERS 75 
SOME MONSTER BIRDS LOST THE POWER TO FLY 77 
THE FIRST MAMMALS HAD TO HIDE 83 

THE LAST OF THE DINOSAURS 87 


12 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


HORNED ANIMALS TOO STUPID TO LIVE 88 

THE IRISH ELK WAS OF TREMENDOUS SIZE 89 

THE FIRST HORSE WAS TWELVE INCHES HIGH 91 

ELEPHANTS HAD VERY SHORT TUSKS AND 
TRUNKS 93 

THE MASTODON WAS RELATED TO THE ELE¬ 
PHANT 95 

THE TREE LIVING MAMMALS SOON DEVELOPED 97 

EARLY MAN HAD TO PROTECT HIMSELF FROM 
ANIMALS 105 


THE WORLD GOES TURNING 


The world goes turning 
Slowly lunging, 

Wrapped in churning 
Winds and plunging 
Rains. The land 
And the waters turn. 

The mountains stand 
Solid and stern. 

But the rivers slide 
Gently in valleys. 

Lithe fishes glide 
In their cold alleys. 

And there are creatures 
Of various forms 
And various natures. 

Rosy worms 
Wallow at dawn 
In pools of dew. 

And the churning, braying 
Waters lash, 

And a star floats burning, 

And clouds crash, 

And the world goes turning. 

—George Dillon. 


From “Boy in the Wind.”—Viking Press. 



Publishers Note 


This book presents in popular form the 
present state of science. It has been reviewed 
by a specialist in this field of knowledge. An 
excerpt from his review follows: 

“This simple and entertaining 
boo\ gives a fine picture of the be¬ 
ginning of life on our earth. It is 
scientifically accurate . It should 
stimulate and thrill every reader” 


Signed: Adolf Carl Noe 

Associate Professor of 
Paleobotany 

The Department of Geology and 
Paleontology 

The University of Chicago 






Chapter I 


IN THE BEGINNING 

T HE world was hurled out of the sun. For 
billions of years the sun has been tossing 
fiery masses into the air. These masses, like 
flaming rockets, travel hundreds of miles trail¬ 
ing clouds of brilliant mist. After a while they 
go back to the sun just as the far-flung spray of a 
fountain returns to it again. The force that 
brings the masses of fire and gas back to the sun 
is called gravity . It is a pulling force that be¬ 
longs to all bodies and is greater in larger ones 
than in small ones. Gravity gives the sun, and 
other bodies of the heavens, the power of a mag¬ 
net. Everything within reach of the magnet is 
drawn down by it, and everything that leaves it 
must return. This is why tennis balls don’t fly 
away and why we fall down instead of up. 


Where did the 
world come from? 


15 


16 HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 

So like the other fiery masses, the world was 
born of the sun. But unlike them, it did not go 
back and become a part of the sun again. 

It was thrown from the sun with great force. 
It shot up very quickly, traveling more miles a 
minute than a bullet. The farther it went, the 
weaker was the sun’s hold on it. By a strange 
chance it soared straight toward a passing star 
which possessed great gravity too. Although 
the passing star was not as great a magnet as 
the sun, it was near enough the earth to influ¬ 
ence it. It pulled the small body of sun-fire to 
the extreme edge of the sun’s reach. There the 
earth stopped. It did not fly off into space 
because, though the sun had not enough power 
at this distance to pull it all the way back, the 
parent was still powerful enough to hold on to 
the runaway. The earth was kept in a certain 
path by the sun’s gravity. 

Yet it did not return to the sun. The passing 
star had given it a “running start” in its race 
away from the sun. This pulling of the earth 
in one direction while the sun pulled it in an- 


IN THE BEGINNING 


l 7 


other, made a perfect balance. The earth stood 
still. It moved neither nearer nor farther away. 
It was like a tug of war with both sides evenly 
matched. Neither side won or lost. 

And so the sun controls the earth but it can 
never make the earth return to it and become a 
part of its fire again. Like a child who wan¬ 
dered too far away and could not find its way 
back, the earth—attracted by the passing star— 
followed it and was lost from the sun forever. 

When the earth first left the sun, it was a hot 
glowing mass of gaseous material. It must have 
looked like a balloon that had caught on fire as 
it floated through space. But as it traveled 
along by itself it lost its heat. The flaming bolt 
cooled quickly and the fiery clouds surrounding 
it turned into many hard small bodies like hail¬ 
stones which were called planetesimals. The 
planetesimals swarmed about the cold mass of 
the earth like countless bees around a hive. The 
cold mass that formed the central core of the 
earth was small—perhaps about a tenth of the 
size the world is today. But this mass was 


What was the 
earth like in the 
beginning? 


18 HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 

destined to grow bigger. Like its parent, this 
child of the sun possessed the marvelous force 
of gravity. The larger it grew the more gravity 
it had. The earth became a powerful magnet 
too. It gathered in all the planetesimals around 
it. It pulled down the shooting stars, the masses 
of fire that the sun tossed within its reach, and 
all the other wandering bodies of the heavens 
that came near it. Whether this very young 
earth had air or not depends upon how large it 
was. Perhaps the first core of earth was so 
small that, like the moon, it did not have enough 
gravity to hold atmosphere, or perhaps like the 
planet Mars, it could only hold very thin gases 
near its surface. Without air, the earth would 
have remained barren and lifeless. The 
brilliant burning sun would have shone upon 
it undimmed by clouds and atmosphere. The 
nights would have been freezing because no 
blanket of air held in the heat after the sun 
went down. Who could have lived on an 
earth that swayed between a temperature that 
was nearly to the boiling point and one 200° 


IN THE BEGINNING 


i9 


or 300° Fahrenheit below zero? This is what 
would have happened if the earth had not in¬ 
creased its gravity so that it was great enough 
to hold air and water on its surface. 

But during the growing stages, it gathered in 
more planetesimals and enlarged its diameter 
from several thousand miles. The surface 
gravity became strong enough to hold atmos¬ 
phere and heavier and thicker layers of air hung 
over the earth. The planetesimals that struck 
the surface freed certain gases that were added 
to the air, and later when volcanos began to 
erupt more gases poured forth into the ever- 
increasing atmosphere. For a long time 
planetesimals showered down on the earth. It 
grew larger because of all the planetesimals 
falling on it. The weight of these added 
bodies pressing down upon the earth made it 
warm inside, and the uneven way in which the 
planetesimals fell on it made it rough and 
uneven outside. 

Along with the other things the earth pulled 
down upon itself was the moisture it drew from 


20 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


How were the 
oceans and 
continents 
formed? 


Why didnt the 
water wear away 
all the land? 


the clouds. This moisture gathered the fine 
dust of broken planetesimals from the air and 
brought it to earth. There the dust helped 
build up the land. In those places where there 
was little rainfall, no dust fell and the earth 
remained low. 

As the earth grew, it collected more water. 
The water came down and filled all the hollows 
and crevices on the uneven surface. Pools were 
formed like the pools that fill the ruts in the 
road after a recent rain. But these were giant 
pools called oceans. As the water ran down 
into the cups and basins of the earth, it left the 
higher lands dry and they were continents. 

When the earth began to pull the moisture 
down upon it, it seemed for awhile as if it might 
some day be completely covered by the oceans. 
There was a danger of the land wearing away. 
Parts of the continents were washed into soil 
and carried by the streams into the ocean. The 
waves washed away the shores. The continents 
were cut lower and lower. If the land had van¬ 
ished entirely all living things that could not 


IN THE BEGINNING 


21 


exist in water would have died. The world 
would have been a strange sea-country inhab¬ 
ited by fish-like forms and water plants. But 
fortunately before the land was completely 
worn away, the ocean began to sink lower too. 

This was because the land that had been washed 
into the sea had made the ocean bottoms heavier. 

The weight pushed down the basins that held 
the waters. At the same time the land became 
lighter. The sinking ocean basins squeezed the 
continents higher. And land was saved for 
life. 

The earth is like an old, old man who has How old is the 
forgotten how long he has lived and sits silently earth? 
by while people try to guess his years. There is 
no exact way of knowing how old the earth 
is, but three ways have been found to give us an 
idea of the billions of years it has lived. 

One way is to measure the salt in the sea. The 
streams of the earth carry the salt to the ocean. 

If we find out how much salt is brought every 
year and how much is in the ocean altogether 
we can divide the larger figure by the smaller 


22 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


one and the answer will be the number of years 
this process of salt-carrying by the rivers has 
been going on. 

Another way is to look at the rocks of the 
earth. We would find that the rocks are in 
layers, one on top of another. If the thickness 



The roc\s are in layers which can be seen easily 
where rivers have cut their valleys 


of these layers of rock is measured, and we can 
find out how long it takes for a layer to become 
that thick, then we know how many years it 
took to build up all the layers that we know are 
in the earth. 












IN THE BEGINNING 


23 


The third way is to examine the oldest rock 
in the earth, which contains a substance called 
radium. Scientists know that as years pass the 
radium changes into other substances and in the 
end turns to lead. We can watch how long it 
takes for a tiny part of the rock to turn to 
lead, and then we can tell how long it took for 
all the lead in the rock to form. And so if we 
can find out the age of the rock by the amount 
of lead in it, we will have some idea of the age 
of the earth. 

Up to the present time no scientist has been 
able to tell the exact age of the earth, though 
they can tell surely that it is very old, certainly 
billions of years. Thus far, like the old, old 
man, the earth keeps silent and lets men go on 
guessing its years. 

The earth was ready for life. The harshness 
of too great cold, and too great heat, was gone, 
and the temperature was just right. There were 
great seas and inland streams. Everything 
necessary for life was present. So, with every¬ 
thing prepared for it—life began. 


What was the first 
living thing on 
earth? 


24 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


No one knows when; no one knows how— 
its beginning is a mystery. And we do not 
know what the first living thing was. We only 
know that it came into a strange world—a 
world empty of trees and flowers and grass and 
overhung with silence. There was nothing to 
make a noise except the slow-moving waters. It 
must have seemed like a world that was dead— 
or not yet born. 

The air may have been so thin that large 
creatures could not have breathed, and the first 
life must have been tiny creatures that did not 
need lots of air. Perhaps we shall never know 
what the first living things were, for they did 
not leave any fossil record of themselves for us 
to study the way the later creatures did. They 
may have been too soft to leave an impression 
on anything they touched. If the fluff of a 
dandelion gone to seed fell on the damp ground 
it would not leave a mark. Perhaps the first 
living things were as light as that. 

Whatever they were, they probably did not 
look like anything we know about today. They 


IN THE BEGINNING 


25 


were perhaps neither plant nor animal but 
something which was to be the beginning of 
both forms of life. 

Living things stay where they have the best 
chance to continue life. The early creatures of 
the earth must have made their homes where it 
was easiest for them to live. It was probably 
not the ocean. The seas were too vast and rest¬ 
less. The life elements, which were probably 
different kinds of chemicals, were scattered and 
diluted with water. They lost some of their 
strength just as fruit juice mixed with water 
becomes milder tasting. 

But along the shores of the oceans the soil 
was soft and muddy. The life elements were 
brought close together. There was no rushing 
current and tide to scatter them. It was prob¬ 
ably here that the first life made its home. These 
tiny things could burrow into the soft soil and 
still feel the warmth of the sun. But what these 
brave little pioneers were we can only guess. 
They remain the greatest mystery in the world. 

So life began—a breathing pulsing thing that 


Where did life 
start? 


26 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


was to develop in slow stages through an endless 
passage of time. Why it began we shall never 
know. We can only see that the earth had 
become fit to house living creatures. 

Time was to bring many changes of the lands 
and seas and climates. Life took new forms to 
meet the new conditions that arose. Strange 
creatures walked the earth, giving rise to new 
types and classes of beasts and fishes. The mys¬ 
tery of life had begun and has not yet come to 
an end. 


Chapter II 


THE STONE BOOK 

T HE earth has written its own story. Like 
all the books in the world it cannot tell 
everything. Like all very old books, this book 
of the earth has missing pages. In places the 
words are dim or in a language men have not 
yet learned to understand. But the book is there 
—a thrilling story of strange and mysterious 
things, of living creatures so small they have 
to be imagined, and of monsters the like of 
which we shall never see alive. 

The pages of the book are the layers of rock 
that lie one on top of another beneath the sur¬ 
face of the earth. When a layer of rock was 
worn down, or washed away, it meant that a 
page of the book was lost forever and with it 
was lost a part of the story of life. It took 
countless ages to make each page of the Stone 
Book. The first chapter is the bottom layer of 


What tells the 
story of the earth? 


27 


28 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


Why are there 
layers of roc\? 


rock. The streets we walk on mark the last 
thing recorded in the book the world is building. 

The surface of the earth has passed through 
many, many changes. We know the sea ate 
away the land and the water wore away the 
earth and the soil was carried into the seas by 
the streams, because this is happening today. 

The fine earth carried by the water slowly 
sank to the bottom of the sea. It covered up 
the bodies of dead sea life that had also sunk 



Mud at the bottom of the seas slowly turned to roc\ 
from the pressure of water 

to the sea floor. Thus a layer of earth buried a 
record of the past. Shells and other lifeless 
forms were made prisoners in the rock. But 
it took thousands of years for a few inches of 
this layer to form. 





THE STONE BOOK 


29 


More earth was carried to the sea bottom, 
and the first layer was covered up. The process 
went on, and as new sea creatures died and fell 
to the bottom, new mud covered them up, for 
ages and ages. Creatures that were soft and 
boneless and without shells vanished forever, 
but all those that were something more than a 
mass of mere jelly, were preserved in the layer 
of soft and yielding soil. 

New lands were being formed. The dust 
from the heavens came down and made a new 
earth surface. Land was pushed up by the 
sinking oceans. What was once ocean bed 
became land, and what was land sometimes 
became an ocean bed. 

The buried land, at first nothing but soft 
mud, became harder and harder as the weight 
of new lands pressed down upon it. Sometimes 
the underground waters brought it cement¬ 
like materials that changed it from a wet and 
soft substance into a hard and rocky one. And 
after many years it no longer was like the mate¬ 
rial it had been when it formed the top of the 


30 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


world. It had turned to rock. This rock did 
not always remain at the bottom of the sea 
because the earth kept lowering its surface. 

Layer after layer of this rock was formed. 
The oldest layers were the bottom layers, and 
so the story of the earth reads backwards. 

What is a fossil? The soft forms of life were lost when they 
died, but others were hidden like buried treasure 
in the layers of rock that once were soft mud. 
Still others vanished, but left some sign that 
they had once been there, as a flying sea bird 
will leave the mark of its wings and feet in the 
sand before it takes up its flight again. 

These remains of early animals and plants, 
as well as the traces and signs they have left, 
are called fossils. It is these fossils that make 
the Stone Book interesting to read, for they are 
like the pictures in a real book. And as Alice 
in Wonderland said, “What is the good of a 
book without pictures?” Without fossils the 
story of the world would have been very dull. 
It would simply have been a story of what the 
land did to the water and what the water did 


THE STONE BOOK 


3 i 


to the land. The marvelous story of life would 
have been left out. 

We do not always know what caused the 
death of the creatures whose forms are saved 
for us in the shape of fossils. But we do know 
that even today, earthquakes will sometimes 
kill great numbers of living creatures, just as 
dynamiting a lake will kill every fish in its 
depths. Such things as earthquakes have been 
happening all through the life of the earth, and 
when large numbers of living things were killed 
at one time the chance of having a fossil record 
was good. 

The most perfect fossil is the actual remains 
of the animal or plant. When this fossil is 
uncovered it looks exactly the same as when it 
was first buried. It has to be chipped out of 
the stone, which was only mud when it covered 
up the dead thing. Instead of changing its form 
the earth preserved it perfectly. 

The most wonderful example of the earth 
preserving a dead creature is that of the great 
Siberian Mammoths. These enormous animals, 


What are fossils 
li\e? 


32 HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 

like hairy elephants, were frozen in the arctic 
ice, thousands of years ago. So, in a natural cold 
storage, they were preserved. Even the flesh 
was kept in condition down to recent years and 
it could be fed to dogs. 

Thousands of ants and tiny insects have been 
found in perfect condition embedded in amber, 
which is a fossil gum of certain old trees. The 
insects crawling along the bark of the tree were 
caught in the sticky resin and were preserved 
there when the resin hardened into amber. This 
is the same amber that is the honey colored stone 
used in jewelry. 

At least one prehistoric rhinocerous was 
found in nearly perfect condition in soil near 
an oil field. But this complete preserving of the 
bodies of animals that died thousands of years 
ago is a rare thing. 

Of course bones and teeth are found because 
they are hard and do not easily decay. If they 
were buried in lakes or pools that contained 
asphalt, they were perfectly preserved. Thou¬ 
sands of bones have been found in a great tar 


THE STONE BOOK 


33 


pool in California, where many animals were 
trapped ages ago. The animals were caught in 
the pool just as quicksands will catch unwary 
animals today. Scientists have found the bones 
of a hundred different animals in this great 
pool—a thrilling sort of buried treasure that 
tells the story of the life that lived here before 
the coming of man. 

Other fossils are like stone. In fact they are 
stone, for time has turned these things to rock, 
and in place of the actual skeleton or form of 
the dead thing, we have a stone shape exactly 
like it. 

This turning of things to stone is like some what is “turning 
fairy tale where a magic spell is cast which t0 stonc - 
changes all things to rock. Even trees have 
been turned to rock, and become like stone 
statues. The trees still have their gnarled 



34 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


trunks, but instead of soft bark they are made 
of cold slippery rock. The shells of ancient 
clam-like animals are found today turned to a 
brassy mineral. 

This “turning to stone” is caused when cer¬ 
tain waters moving through th£ earth come to 



There are petrified forests where the trun\s of trees 
have been turned to stone 


the buried form. The waters gradually wash 
away the animal or vegetable matter, and leave 
in its place some mineral matter like quartz or 
common limestone. 











THE STONE BOOK 


35 


Sometimes the very rocks themselves are 
made of fossils. Chalk is an example. It is 
composed almost entirely of very tiny sea 
animals. The skeletons of these animals are 
made of a soft white stone. Certain kinds of 
limestone are made up of thousands and thou¬ 
sands of shells, that came from some clam or 
snail-like form, all cemented together by the 
action of the water. 

There is “More than a stone’s smooth sight¬ 
less face” in the looming chalk cliffs and the 
lime pits. There are the millions of lacy skele¬ 
tons that tell the story of life in its earliest forms, 
a life that has always been born to die. 

Only the sea is without footprints. Wherever 
land has been are the tracings and impressions 
of the passing of living things. This third 
group of fossils is the most picturesque and 
mysterious of them all. 

There is the imprint of a dragon-fly’s wings 
found stamped on ancient stone. What is this 
besides just a “mark of wings?” It is an accu¬ 
rate picture of a lost form of life, of something 


What is the “mar\ 
of wings?” 


What are moulds? 


36 HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 

we shall never see. It is a more perfect drawing 
than the cleverest artist could make. It helps 
tell the story of the world just as surely as the 
more perfectly preserved bodies do. 

There are all kinds of impressions. There 
are dark streaks and dots that might have been 
the trails and borings made by worms. There 
are fantastic outlines of strange fish. There are 
immense footprints that tell of giant animals 
walking the earth. The fossil that is a mere im¬ 
pression was usually made in a soft mud bed 
where it was easy to leave a mark. Here a leaf 
might drop, leaving its delicate tracery—or shell 
—or feather—or bone, to have its impression 
harden with the mud into stone and be recorded 
forever as surely as if it were housed in rock. 

Why is it that people still shudder at the 
thought of the volcano Vesuvius? They cannot 
forget the tragic fate of the city of Pompeii 
which in one sense became a fossil city. At the 
time of the eruption of Vesuvius, an outburst of 
lava carried ashes into the air. They were shot 
high in the atmosphere and showered down 


THE STONE BOOK 


37 


upon the earth like a hot rain. They buried all 
things beneath them. The volcanic ashes cov¬ 
ered the bodies of living things. Centuries 
later the ash coverings remained but the bodies 
inside had disappeared. By filling the hollow 



The fossil of a palm leaf is a print in stone—once 
mud—of the leaf itself 

space where the bodies had been with plaster 
of paris, perfect casts were made of the original 
forms preserved so strangely from the past. 

Moulds are also made in quieter ways than 
the volcanic eruption that has gone down in 
history. The hole that a worm bores in the 
ground—or any impression left on the earth— 



3» 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


may be filled with mineral matter A mould is 
made which preserves the form but not the 
actual structure of the creature. In this way 
many soft jelly fishes were preserved. 


Chapter III 


THE FIRST FISH 


T HE creatures of the early seas that had no 
hard shells to be preserved, left silhouettes 
on the sands. There are worm trails to tell us 
of the passage of soft-bodied creatures. 

Other impressions and moulds tell of queer 
sponges and jelly-fish. The shell-covered crea¬ 
tures were imbedded in sand and became fossils. 
They are found today looking nearly the same 
as they did long ago. Records tell of snail-like 
beings, of clam-like creatures and of the im¬ 
portant early ancestors of scorpions and king- 
crabs, which were crab-like forms with many 
legs and hard shells. Star-fish, ancient coral, sea- 
anenomes and countless other strange shelled 
forms have had their stories told by fossils. 

These early sea creatures lived a lazy life, 
burying themselves in the mud or clinging to 
wet rocks. For the most part they were little 


What were the 
earliest creatures 
to leave a record? 


39 


4° 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What came before 
fishes? 


more than ugly moving masses—many of them 
headless. They probably knew or felt nothing 
of what went on about them—the warm moist 
air, the thick mists that hung over the sea, and 
a world of stillness broken only by the crashing 
of tempests and volcanic eruptions. 

And now the lazy world of mud creatures 
gave way to the more troubled times connected 
with life in the ocean deep itself. The pale 
jelly-fish and the star-fish continued to bury 
themselves in the mud but the new creatures 
ventured into the dangerous sea itself. The 
newcomers differed from the soft and sleepy 
forms that already existed, in one all-important 
way. They possessed the beginnings of back¬ 
bones. It is true that these were not made of 
bone but of a gristly cartilege. 

To this day men refer to those content to sit 
back and do nothing as “having no backbone.” 
One with courage and endurance “has back¬ 
bone.” The first creatures to possess a backbone 
—or what was like it—were the first ones in 
the world to show the truth of the saying. These 


THE FIRST FISH 


4i 


small fish-like animals were completely covered 
with a bony armor. The armor plates that they 
wore were to protect them in their fight for life. 
Certain of these shell-skinned types were to give 
rise to true fishes. But these first forms were 
little like the true fish that soon followed them. 
They sometimes had paired fins and a mouth, 
but no real jaws. They were small and slender 
—some measuring about seven inches in length. 

But even with the appearance of these crea¬ 
tures with gristly backbones, there was little 
flash or glint of swimming bodies in the ocean. 
The first fish-like forms stayed close to the sea¬ 
floor and spent long periods of time floating and 
drifting along. They were only a very little 
more active than the forms that lay in the mud. 



4 * 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What was the 
first true fish li\e? 


But at least they had ventured into the open 
and were ready to defend themselves with their 
strange coverings of bony armor. 

The first true fish had a shark-like form. 
Fossils prove that it had a well-developed back¬ 
bone. It had a long slender body compared 
with the early sea-creatures that spent so much 
time lying in the mud. Some scientists think 
that the fish became long by resisting the push 
of the water. Its backbone helped to do this. 
The biggest of these shark-like fish were an 
astonishing jump in size from the little armored 
creatures that came before. They were from two 
to five feet long. They had paired fins and 
biting jaws with teeth. They became the pirates 
of the waters for their fins made them better 
swimmers than those with little or no fins at 
all, and their sharp teeth made them able to 
devour coarser and tougher foods. This first 
shark-like form soon disappeared—but it had 
offered its gifts to living things—paired fins and 
tooth-bearing jaws had come into the world. 
Legs and heads were to come from these in time. 


THE FIRST FISH 


43 


The bony fish is the ancestor of most of the What was the 
fish that live today as well as the distant fore- hony ^ sh? 
fathers of land forms of life. It made its appear¬ 
ance very soon after the shark-like fish and was 
probably related in some way to it. The great 
and different thing about this new fish was, of 
course, that it had a skeleton of real bone. The 
bony fish was a shining traveler of the waters. 

Its bony-covered head and the bony coat of mail 


Soon there were fish that had plates of bone to 
protect their soft bodies 



44 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


Who were the 
giants among the 
early fish? 


What were the 
lung-fish? 


that protected the rest of its body was coated 
with a glistening substance that made the fish 
gleam in the water. 

The giant fish of the very early times is a 
mystery. It had no bony skeleton so we cannot 
tell very much about it. But this we know— 
that these great and fierce creatures were from 
ten to eighteen feet in length and had powerful 
jaws and armored heads. They surged through 
the deep, pirating among the other sea-creatures. 
They could devour anything they saw for they 
were the biggest living bodies in the world. 

The bony fish began to develop lungs which 
kept them alive when the pools they lived in 
became stagnant and the fish had to breathe air. 
From the early bony fish with lungs came other 
forms, and related to one of these was the true 
“lung-fish.” In some of them the lung became 
so highly developed, that the fish could still live 
when the pool dried up completely. 


Chapter IV 


THE FISH THAT WALKED 

S O FAR a desolate land had looked on the 
thickly populated waters. Only the shores 
of the sea had seen life. Inland the silence 
hung heavily over the earth. There were no 
bird calls in the strange fern-trees. No creatures 
hid among the tall weeds. The land was empty 
of life. Until one day a fish walked on to the 
shore of the sea. 

One of the fish-forms had acquired lungs that 
were capable of breathing air. The new fish 
had developed in other ways as well. Their 
backbones had changed from skeletons of cart¬ 
ilage and gristle to sturdy bone that would 
support a body out of water. Certain of these 
fish had grown pairs of fins with strong bones 
that were not unlike limbs. The fish was ready 
to leave the water. It was possible for it to live 
out of water because of its air-breathing lungs. 


How did the fish 
get ready to leave 
the water? 


45 


4 6 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


Why did the fish 
come on to the 
land? 


It could walk as well as swim because its strong 
fins could move beneath its body like legs. 

And so the time came when the first of a 
great line of walking creatures rose out of the 
sea. Later the fin that walked was to appear 
as a real foot that left its track on the unin¬ 
habited lands. 

The scene is a little tepid pool, drying inward 
from the edge. As long as the pool contained 
some water and was merely stagnant the bony 
lung fish could still survive. But as soon as 
there was a possibility of it drying up com¬ 
pletely, the water-bred fish were in danger of 
dying. Some could live a little while by bur¬ 
rowing in the mud, but sooner or later they 
perished. The more ambitious lung-breathing 
fish—instead of lying in a sluggish torpor—left 
the dried-up pools and ventured into the new 
world on land. Many were to meet their death 
there—but they had accomplished the most 
dramatic event thus far in the history of life. 
A fish had walked and a fin was soon to become 
a real foot! 


THE FISH THAT WALKED 


47 


Like all first steps, this one was probably as 
unsteady as the first steps a baby makes. The 
paired fins that walked were very weak. And 
yet they were able to make the first step in the 
story of the world. 

Closely following the fish that walked and 
related to it in some way, was a fish-like form 
called the “amphibian” The principal differ¬ 
ence in its form was that it had legs instead of 
fins. They were very weak legs, however, and 
short like a seal’s flippers. The amphibian 
must have crawled along slowly on his clumsy 
spraddling limbs. Like the walking fish, when 
the amphibians discovered the pool they lived 
in was drying up completely, they set bravely 
forth to discover another pool. Probably they 
came on land in order to get back into the water 
again. The step ashore probably saved the 
amphibian’s life for it became used to the land 
and after that could live just as well in seasons 
when the waters dried up. But the amphibian 
never became a land animal completely. It 
was probably the first misfit in the world. It 


What was the first 
step probably li\e? 


What was the 
first land-dweller? 


4 8 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


How do we \now 
these animals 
wal\ed? 


What are the 
amphibians of 
today? 


belonged to the water and outgrew it. And it 
soon discovered it was not wanted on the land. 
The amphibian continued to lay eggs in its 
water home and its young drew their first breath 
through gills. But soon lungs developed and 
the children followed their parents onto the 
dry land to live. 

The oldest amphibian footprint found pre¬ 
served in sandstone which tells of a beach 
promenade of the heroic land and water 
dweller, is nearly four inches long. The am¬ 
phibian that made the footprint was probably 
about three feet long himself. The footprint 
is that of a right foot with two well-formed toes. 
The signs of a third and fourth toe are seen but 
these are not quite formed. 

The frogs, the toads, the salamanders—the 
ugly creatures that walk with turned out feet 
or that tumble into the water and swim with an 
ungraceful paddling motion, are all the dis¬ 
tant relatives of the first fish that walked. Like 
the early amphibians these twentieth century 
ones cannot shake off the spell of the water. 


THE FISH THAT WALKED 


49 


They live near it. They return to it to lay 
their eggs. They begin life in it as wriggling 
and fishlike tadpoles. 

The largest amphibian reached a length of What were the 
fifteen feet or more. This creature was an ex- ancient 

. . f t *i • amphibians li\e? 

ception to his kind, for most amphibians were 
smaller in size. These smaller ones looked like 


Reptile-li\e creatures left the water and began life 
on land 





5° 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


Why were they 
chained to 
the water? 


Why was the 
amphibian 
a failure? 


salamanders, though some lost their limbs and 
resembled snakes. A few developed strange 
horns at the sides of their flattened skulls. They 
were of widely varied habits. Some in spite of 
their well-developed limbs probably spent most 
of their time in the water. It was only the more 
adventurous ones that became land-dwellers. 

The amphibians were chained to the water 
because they always had to return to it when the 
time came to lay their eggs. The eggs were soft 
and unprotected and would have been easily 
destroyed on the land. Besides the baby am¬ 
phibians did not come out of their shells ready 
for life on the land. In order to become a land 
form they had to change from a tadpole to an 
entirely new body. 

The amphibian was a misfit. It belonged 
neither wholly to the land nor completely to 
the water. It was born in a stream but it did not 
live there all the time as a fish does. It had 
acquired the “land habit” by its slow trips from 
pool to pool and yet when it was on the land it 
was forever seeking the water. 


THE FISH THAT WALKED 


5i 


A misfit that belongs to neither one thing nor 
the other is rarely a success. This is why the 
amphibians died out as a class. When climate 
changes caused the lands to grow dry and the 
streams to disappear, the end of the amphibians 
had come. They might be able to live until 
they were old and it was time to die, but they 
could not pass on their life because there was 
no water in which to lay their eggs. 

But the courageous land-dwelling amphib¬ 
ians had made their contribution to the progress 
of life. They were the first creatures with back¬ 
bones to live on the land and they were the 
beginning of a line of life that has been the 
ruling one ever since in the kingdom of crea¬ 
tures of the world. 

They passed on their best qualities to a new 
creature that followed after them and was much 
more fitted to live on the land alone than the 
amphibians had been. 

From this time on, beginning with the 
dwellers of the land, the story of life becomes 
an exciting one. Each new kind of life is more 


52 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


startling that the last. Each new kind is some¬ 
thing like the life that went before, and some¬ 
thing like the life that followed later. The 
weaker lines vanished and the stronger ones 
endured. 


Chapter V 


THE GIANT MONSTERS 

AND now for the first time an animal that 
L belonged completely to the land made its 
appearance. It was born on land—from hard- 
shelled eggs hatched there instead of in the 
water. It was an air-breathing creature with 
no sign of gills and from the very beginning of 
its life was independent of the water. This set 
it apart from every other creature that had lived 
in the early world. 

This new animal was called a reptile. In 
many ways it was like the amphibian which 
had never left the water entirely. The first 
reptiles were probably clumsy, slow-moving 
creatures with very short legs. But these were 
soon followed by a striking class of beasts called 
“ruling” reptiles, because they were the most 
important group of animals in their time. They 
used their hind legs, and became swift run- 


What creature 
first lived on land 
only? 


53 


54 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What were the 
reptiles li\e? 


ners. After a time they learned to stand up 
from the ground as their back legs grew 
stronger. 

The giant monster reptiles are the most 
amazing animals the world has probably ever 
known. Some of the reptiles were smaller 



The diplodocus was eighty feet long and ate from the 
bottom of swamps 

than the tiny lizards of today, but others 
were larger than any animals that are now 
alive. If it were not for the Stone Book we 
might not believe the stories of these monsters. 
But buried in the rocks, where men have found 


THE GIANT MONSTERS 


55 


their bones, are the proofs that these great rep¬ 
tiles once lived and roamed the land. 

The reptiles took many forms as time went 
on. Some went back to the water and changed 
into shapes and forms that were best fitted for 
the life they had to live, on both land and water. 
Turtles and crocodiles are examples. Others 
entered the great seas and became creatures that 
might be called sea-monsters. They were 
lizard and serpent-like creatures of enormous 
size. And last of all there were reptiles of the 
air, that after a time developed wings with 
which to fly. 

From the ruling reptiles came finally a land 
reptile called a dinosaur, which means “terrible 
lizard.” However, not all the dinosaurs were 
terrible. Some were small and ran about 
swiftly on their hind legs. But gradually they 
increased in size until at the end of their rule 
they were tremendous monsters. Some of them 
had skulls five feet long, and saw edged teeth 
a foot long, with which they attacked and de¬ 
voured smaller creatures. In the state of 


What were the 
giant land reptiles 
like? 


56 HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


Wyoming the fossil remains of one of these 
tremendous creatures has been found. It was 
more than thirty-eight feet long and stood over 



Some of the dinosaurs were tremendous in size and 
had enormous jaws 


eight feet high. It had a stiff tail standing 
straight out, and jaws so wide that it is thought 
its victims were swallowed whole. The arms 
and feet had powerful claws, like those of an 
eagle, only much larger. 


THE GIANT MONSTERS 


57 


Most of the land reptiles had heads that were 
quite small when compared with the size of 
their bodies. They had thick and strong hind 
legs on which they walked. Their tails were 
thick and long, like those of a lizard, in order 
to balance their bodies as they moved. Many 
of them had very short front legs, or arms, 
which they carried close to their upright bodies. 

Sometimes the hind legs grew very long. 
One dinosaur has a name that means “he who 
walks on stilts,” because of his very long legs. 
Other dinosaurs walked on all four feet, for they 
were very heavy monsters. To support their 
great weight the legs were sturdy and straight, 
like the pillars of a building. One of them 
measured over sixty-six feet long, and prob¬ 
ably weighed about thirty-eight tons when it 
was alive. 



5» 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


Another one had a tail ten feet long. It may 
have used its tail like Siegfried’s dragon, Fafnir, 



Many of the monsters were so tall they had no 
difficulty in eating tree-tops 

who lashed it in all directions, uprooting trees 
and capturing its victims. 

The longest dinosaur that has been found in 
the fossil records of the earth measures eighty- 



THE GIANT MONSTERS 


59 


seven feet, but this includes a very long tail. 
Another one that measured eighty feet was 
probably bulkier, for it had scarcely any tail. 

One of the tallest monsters had a long neck 
like a giraffe and could easily have looked down 
at the roof of a four story building. 

“Bird robber’’ is the name given to one of the 
dinosaurs. This creature was not large—per¬ 
haps seven feet long with the slenderness of a 
setter dog. It had long slender fingers with¬ 
out claws. It is thought that it may have lived 
upon birds or even fish. At any rate its bones 





6o 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


tell us that it was quick and agile, and could 
probably snatch birds. The other big and slow 
dinosaurs plodded along on their enormous legs 
unable to keep up with the “bird robber.” 

The “duck-billed” dinosaur had a mouth 
with a long flat front and the back part filled 
with many teeth. The last of the duck-billed 
dinosaurs is thought to have had more teeth 
than any other creature. These animals were 
about thirty feet long and could probably move 
about not only on the land but in the water for 
they had a tail that must have been a great help 
in swimming. The hands were webbed, like 
the feet of a duck—another reason for thinking 
they could move about in the water. 

The armored dinosaurs walked on four feet 
and carried great rows of thick plates on their 
backs. Some of the plates of this horn-like 
armor stood up like the combs of roosters, and 
was so hard that none of the other animals 
could cut through it, either with their horns or 
tusks. This armor was probably something 
like the shell of a turtle. 


THE GIANT MONSTERS 


61 


The most astonishing animal of all the 
armored dinosaurs must have been the one that 
was hump-shaped. Along its back were two 
rows of terrible horn-like spines, each of them 
about twenty-five inches long. This animal’s 
skeleton shows that its tail and hind legs were 
very strong, so it is quite likely that the creature 
protected itself by means of its spine-like back 
and attacked its prey with its hind legs and tail. 
It must have weighed more than the largest of 
living elephants, but it had a tiny brain. In 
fact, its brain was so small that scientists say 
that it knew about as much as a three-weeks 
old kitten. 

There were other larger armored dinosaurs, 
one looking rather like a rhinoceros, from 
twenty to twenty-five feet long. This one had 
a large head, but most of the others had small 
ones. The head had horns and the mouth 
was a cutting beak something like that of a 
turtle. This creature must have been a terrible 
enemy because of its tremendous strength and 
heavy armor. 


62 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What were the 
giant sea monsters 
like? 


Most of these creatures with enormous strong 
bodies, had small brains. With small brains 
they could not protect themselves by their cun¬ 
ning and so had to rely on their armor. This 
meant that gradually the ones with the poorest 
armor all died and disappeared and toward the 
end of the dinosaur period most of the ones re¬ 
maining were those which had heavy coverings 
of bony armor. 

In the sea there were also giant reptiles, some 
of them shaped like fish. They had heads 
formed in a pointed beak to aid them in catch¬ 
ing fish. The end of their backbone formed 
a part of their shark-like tail and they had a fin 
on their back as fishes have. The limbs that 
were once suited to the land now became 
paddle-like. Probably these sea monsters did 
not stir out of the water, even though they were 
air breathers. 

Another kind of sea monster did not use its 
tail to help it swim, but moved its limbs like 
long oars, thus rowing itself along. It had a 
long, snake-like neck and head, powerful jaws 


THE GIANT MONSTERS 


63 


and many pointed teeth to snatch at the 
creatures that were its prey. 

Although some of these sea creatures must 
have measured about thirty feet from snout to 
tail, they did not become as large as the land 



Great sea monsters lived in the water and preyed 
upon the fish 


reptiles. Our own whales of today—though 
not belonging to the reptile family—are bigger 
than most of the sea monsters of old. 

There was another kind of sea creature that 
was much more fish-like than most of the rep¬ 
tiles. It was probably descended from the 
four-legged land reptiles that became used to 



6 4 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What is the 
strange fact about 
a reptile s teeth ? 


How did the giant 
monsters protect 
themselves? 


the water. It was like the porpoise among 
the living whales of today, though the two are 
not related. 

The sea reptiles did not have as many differ¬ 
ent forms as the land reptiles did. They had a 
single kind of life, in water, to which they 
adapted themselves, while the land reptiles had 
to become used to many different living condi¬ 
tions. Perhaps certain of the land monsters 
that could swim should be included in the sea- 
monsters, too, such as the duck-billed dinosaurs. 

Reptiles today, as well as years and years ago, 
wear out their teeth and replace them at once. 
They carry an extra supply in their jaws. A 
certain dinosaur had a supply of nearly four 
hundred teeth in his lower jaw. It is such teeth 
—sometimes nearly five inches long—that tell 
most of the fossil story of the sea monsters. 

The great dinosaurs were scaly and armored. 
Probably the scaled dragons of fairy tale and 
legend owe their beginning to the scaly horror 
of the great lizards. Other reptile forms had 
horns and bony protections around the eyes. 


THE GIANT MONSTERS 


65 


Certain ones had tails that could be lashed 
about like an extra leg. Their teeth were fear¬ 
ful saw-edged weapons of the crudest sort. 
Perhaps their greatest protection was their giant 
size—for what other creature could battle them 
and hope to live? 

Why, then, did they die? Greater than all 
other forms on the earth then, and never 
equalled in size since, why did these enormous 
creatures perish? 

No one knows exactly why these great reptiles 
disappeared. Perhaps they ate all things big 
enough to be eaten and then turned upon one 
another to satisfy their terrible hunger. Per¬ 
haps they destroyed each other in fearful battles, 
with a clashing of horns and bony armor and a 
grinding of great teeth. Perhaps they died as 
a race, just as a single thing dies—because it is 
time to die. 

The last of the great monsters were old, very 
old. Some had no teeth. Others had reached 
such great sizes that they lay in the swamps like 
great lumps of rock. It is most probable that 


Why did they 
disappear from 
the earth? 


66 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


death came from natural causes and not from 
some great battle between them. 

The land was constantly changing, and as 
the seas sank lower and the lands became higher, 
the inland seas and swamps were drained by 
streams running to the seas. In and around 
these inland swamps the dinosaurs had lived, 
and when the swamps disappeared their homes 
were blotted out. This great race of fantastic 
giant monsters could not become used to new 
living conditions. And so, it is supposed that, 
one by one they died in slow glory, with their 
record well preserved. 


Many of the reptiles spent their time lying in the 
swamps and rivers 



Chapter VI 


THE REPTILE THAT FLEW 


HPHE reptile family had one more part to 
J- play. They did what every human being 
has always longed to do since childhood—they 
learned to fly. 

Certain of the reptiles had a bat-like wing 
and hollow air-filled bones which made them 
able to fly. And this was true flying, not just 
gliding. There have been other flying reptiles 
since but they should really be called “gliding 
reptiles.” The gliding reptiles float downward 
in a slanting line when they fall from some 
height, like airplanes with the engines shut off. 
True flying is more than this—it means the 
power to rise from the ground and to stay in the 
air, if only for a few moments. 

This ancient group of flying reptiles—some¬ 
times called the flying dragons—could do this. 
It is believed that some of them could fly for 
67 


What were the 
flying dragons? 


68 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What were their 
wings li\e? 


How big were 
the wings? 


quite a distance, for their fossil remains have 
been found far inland from the ancient shores 
where they lived. 

Their wings are thought to have looked like 
the wings of a bat, for they were formed of 
skin and not of feathers like the wings of a 
bird. This piece of skin was stretched on each 
side of the body, and reached from the arms to 
the little hind leg. One great long finger held 
the wing in front. This was one difference 
between the flying reptiles and the bat of today. 
The bat holds its wing by three fingers. The 
reptile’s long finger was its fourth one, and the 
other three were too small to be of any use. 
Our fourth finger is our little finger, but the fly¬ 
ing reptile’s fourth finger was quite the opposite. 

The flying reptiles were of all sizes, from the 
size of a sparrow to that of a baby airplane. 
Sometimes they were as truly monsters of the 
air as the giant reptiles of their family were 
monsters of the land and sea. Fossil records 
show wings of different sizes. In one the wings 
measure eighteen feet from tip to tip. Prob- 


THE REPTILE THAT FLEW 69 

ably the largest one had wings nearly twenty- 
eight feet across. The Stone Book has captured 
some fine specimens for scientists to study. 

Most of the new forms of life had come from What is the 
some simpler form that lived iust before. The ™y ster y °f the 

1 . fiy in S dragons? 

animal with the foot had come from the animal 



li\e those of bats 


with the strong and bony fin. For a long time 
scientists puzzled over the question of the 
wings of these reptiles. They could not see how 






70 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


the reptile with a wing came to live, for they 
could not find any fossil records of reptiles that 
had the beginning of wings. The wings of in¬ 
sects and possibly of birds came from something 



The skeletons showed that they still had fingers on 
the wings 


like a fin that was first used for swimming. 
But the wings of the flying reptiles and later, 
those of the bat, seem to be entirely different. 
Probably in the beginning of things there was 



THE REPTILE THAT FLEW 


7 * 


some form of life from which these two winged 
things came. But that was so long ago that no 
record has ever been discovered of this unknown 
ancestor of flying creatures. 

The fossil records that men have found of the 
flying reptiles show that they first appear in 
their fully developed form, with complete 
wings. Any later records merely mark changes 
in size or physical traits, as the loss of tail and 
teeth. They must have been remarkable spec¬ 
tacles as they swooped through the heavens, cast¬ 
ing shadows with their immense wings. What 
strange fate had made them dragons of the air 
instead of the seas or the lands? The Stone 
Book keeps the reason a mystery. But far back 
in the past there must have been some form 
about which we know nothing. Did it have 
wings or only the beginnings of them? Did it 
learn to fly by accident or to escape enemies on 
the ground? These are all things to wonder 
about. Whatever it was, it gave the gift of 
wings to a line of life. After the flying dragons, 
the birds were to come. Somewhere in the 


72 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


shadows of the past hides the dim ghost-like 
form of the first creature that learned to fly 
through the air and gave rise to all flying things 
that came afterwards. 

Like the other giant monsters of the land and 
sea, the flying dragons disappeared from the 
world. Like them, it is supposed that they died 
when their race was no longer fitted to the con¬ 
ditions of the world. Whether they grew 
weaker or simply got old and failed to start new 
life, we cannot tell. We only know that there 
are no flying dragons darkening the skies today. 


Chapter VII 


THE FIRST BIRD 

O NE of the distant ancestors of the bird was 
probably some reptile form. Scientists 
have not quite agreed upon the exact form. 
Some believe it was a dinosaur-like reptile, be¬ 
cause the walking dinosaurs left foot-prints very 
much the same as the first bird’s footprints. 
The dinosaurs often walked on their hind legs 
in a bird-like way and they had three toes, like 
a bird. 

Other scientists believe that the bird was a 
distant cousin of the flying reptile, and de¬ 
scended from the same creature from which the 
flying reptile came. At least, the great men 
who have studied the history of bird forms have 
nearly all agreed that it was probably some 
Ruling Reptile that was the ancestor of the bird. 
But just what animal was the bird’s ancestor 
has not yet been discovered. 


Who was its great- 
great-great-great 
grandfather? 


73 


74 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


How did the bird 
ta\e after its 
ancestor? 


Some of the first fossil records of birds are 
so like reptiles that it is hard to tell which group 
they belong to. One great scientist said that 
birds were “glorified reptiles.” 

Birds first appeared in the same age when the 
great dinosaurs ruled the earth. The world 
was still covered with great plants that would 
be unfamiliar today. The forest as we know 
it today had not yet appeared but was soon to 
come. The climate was still very moist. A 
fossil of one of these ancient .reptile-like birds 
shows that it was quite like the reptiles in many 
ways. It had a long tail like a dinosaur, but 
with feathers on each side. Men think that 
feathers were a changed sort of scale, which was 
what the reptiles had. The first birds had 
teeth, like the reptiles—though the birds of 
today no longer have them. The wings had 
feathers but it is plain to see that they were like 
the arms of the dinosaurs. The clawed fingers 
were separate, and were like those of the lizard¬ 
like reptiles. The first bird to leave a fossil 
record was about the size of a pigeon. 


THE FIRST BIRD 


75 


The main difference between the bird and 
the reptiles is, of course, in the wings. The bird 
was to live its life in the air and it was well fitted 
to do so. Besides having wings, it had hollow 



The first of the birds were not expert flyers, but they 
were li\e our birds in many ways 


bones filled with air, while most other creatures 
had bones filled with marrow. This made the 
bird lighter and it could fly easily. Scales prob¬ 
ably turned to feathers to keep the bird warm 


flow was it unlike 
its reptile rela¬ 
tives? 



?6 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What were some 
of the ancient 
birds li\e? 


in its flight through the cool air. Most of the 
reptiles are cold-blooded, but birds have warm 
blood. Some of the dinosaurs were thought to 
have had warm blood, but we know the birds 
had to have warm blood so that no matter how 
chilly the wind the bird could keep comfortable. 
The forelegs of the bird were changed to wings. 
The first reptile-like bird had teeth, but the 
fossil records of the later birds show that grad¬ 
ually the teeth changed to a horny bill. 

Fossils show that some of the birds lost their 
wings. They were like the penguins of today 
that swim with their fore-limbs. They swam 
so well that they did not need their wings at all, 
and after a time the wings dwindled away. 
One of these great swimming birds was four 
and a half feet long. It was a splendid diver, 
like the loons of our time. It is thought that 
this bird was covered with soft, smooth feathers. 
The bird’s legs stood out like a remarkable pair 
of oars, and not like the legs of other swimming 
birds which kept their feet beneath them like a 
duck or goose. 


THE FIRST BIRD 


77 


One monster bird with wings has been found 
in South America. It must have stood about 
twelve feet high and have been like a tremen¬ 
dous vulture. Thus we see that the birds, too, 
reached giant sizes. Many of them endured 



and lived on the ground 

for a long time. Fossils of a late date in history 
show that there were giant birds in New Zea¬ 
land and other parts of the world. 

Some of them laid eggs of tremendous size. 
It was probably these great birds that account 
for the story of the roc that Sinbad the Sailor 


78 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What has been the 
progress of birds? 


tells in the Arabian Nights. This is what he 
said: 

“By this time the sun was about to set, and all 
of a sudden the sky became as dark as if it had 
been covered with a thick cloud. I was much 
astonished at this sudden darkness, but much 
more when I found it occasioned by a bird of 
monstrous size, that came flying toward me. I 
remember that I had often heard mariners speak 
of a miraculous bird called the roc and decided 
that a great white dome of immense height that 
I had seen must be the bird’s egg. As I saw 
the roc coming, I crept close to the egg, so that 
I had before me one of the bird’s legs, which 
was as big as the trunk of a tree. I tied myself 
strongly to it with my turban in hopes that 
next morning she would carry me with her out 
of this desert island. The bird flew away as 
soon as it was daylight and carried me so high 
I could not see the earth and she descended with 
so much rapidity that I lost my senses.” 

One of the most interesting things about birds 
is that little change has happened to them since 


THE FIRST BIRD 


79 


prehistoric ages. Once the bird lost its features 
like the reptile it remained very much the 
same as it is today. There are very few fossil 
forms of birds compared with those we have of 
other forms of life. Probably this is because 
they were so light that if they fell into the seas, 
they would float for a long time instead of sink¬ 
ing to the bottom and forming fossils. If they 
fell on land, they would decay and probably 
animals would devour them. But the fossils 
that we have found show them to have been 
quite like our modern birds. 

Probably the reason was because the birds 
quickly fitted themselves for their life in the 
air and adapted themselves so perfectly that no 
change was needed. 

The bird fitted itself to its life of flight so well 
that it was able to travel with great speed 
through the air and to fly to great heights. 

Tests have been made of the speed of birds 
today. And we can believe that the flyers of 
the early world were much the same as those 
today. The speed record of birds was made by 


Is the bird better 
than the airplane? 


8o 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


a house swallow which flew thirty-two miles in 
twelve and one-half minutes. This is at a rate 
of one hundred and fifty-three miles an hour. 
Vultures can rise from seven thousand to fifteen 
thousand feet, and one man reported seeing a 
bird fly above Mt. Chimborazo which rises 
20,498 feet into the sky. 

Even common birds like geese, storks or 
plovers, can hold speed records that compare 
with those of ordinary airplanes. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE SMART LITTLE ANIMAL 


—there in distant forests, where 
The little fur-clad creatures fare , 
Shrill cries of torture rend the airl” 


fames Beebe Carrington * 



HE old order fadeth”—and a new one 


takes its place. This is—to some extent— 
the history of the story of life. Most of the 
great reptile forms were to die. The lords of 
the line—the sea and land monsters and the 
flying dragons were blotted out. A new type 
of creature was to rule the world of living things. 

Most scientists think that the new form of 
life had some reptile for its distant ancestor. 
This newcomer was on earth at the same time 
as the giant dinosaurs, and probably before 
them. But it was such a small form of life and 
so unimportant that it mattered very little. This 


*From Anthology, “Poetry’s Plea for Animals,” Lothrop, Lee & Shepherd. 


What new form 
of life made its 
appearance? 


81 



82 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What was its rep¬ 
tile relatives li\e? 


Who was the 
“underdog” in the 
Age of Reptiles? 


creature was called a mammal. It was warm¬ 
blooded, very active, and it nursed and watched 
over its young. 

The mammal-like reptiles that appeared with 
the other reptiles, far back in time, were four- 
footed creatures that could run swiftly and ac¬ 
tively. They were about the size of a squirrel. 
They had legs underneath their bodies, some¬ 
thing like those of a dog, and not the sprawled 
out limbs that the reptiles had. But they were 
still reptiles in many ways. Fossil remains of 
their jaw bones tell us this. Their teeth, though, 
were placed in their mouths in much the same 
way as the mammal’s teeth. They were not as 
long-lived as the other reptiles. But they prob¬ 
ably left, as their descendants, the earliest of the 
real mammals of the earth. 

This first little mammal was completely in 
the shadow of the giant reptiles. The fossil 
remains tell us that they were small creatures 
and had tiny jaws so probably they lived on in¬ 
sects. There was not a chance in the world of 
the early mammal’s even trying to match the 


THE SMART LITTLE ANIMAL 83 

strength of the sea and land monsters that 
reigned supreme. 

But the mammals had something to make up , 

for their weakness. They had brains. Other ln what wa y were 

1 r 1 ill- 1 1 they superior to 

creatures before them had brains too, but they the re p t n es ? 
were so small that they were almost useless. 

Even the greatest reptiles had brains that were 
tiny compared to the size of their great bodies. 

The brain of the mammal could grow and it 
did, far beyond that of the other creatures. 





8 4 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


Why was it that 
mammals “grew 
up?” 


The reptile knew practically nothing, but the 
little mammal had a brain that could learn 
things by experience and it could remember. 
The reptile moved about like a mechanical 
beast—but the little mammal was alert and 
watchful. This is probably why the mammals 
were not destroyed by the reptiles. They knew 
their enemies, were quick, and had sense 
enough to run away from them. 

We can see why the mammals stayed alive— 
because they moved swiftly, and because they 
stayed small in size. Little ones could hide 
easily in the thickets, but the larger ones would 
have been easy prey for the great monsters. 

When the giant reptiles began to die out the 
chance came for the mammals to develop into 
something larger and more important. 

The mammal was the perfect mother to its 
young. Among the other forms of life, par¬ 
ticularly among the reptiles, the parents paid no 
attention to the child. A young reptile could 
not really ever be young. It was born grown 
up. Its mother deserted it at once so it had to 


THE SMART LITTLE ANIMAL 


85 


be born all ready to take care of itself. Except 
for size it was entirely developed. When it 
came out of the egg it was a tiny imitation of 
its parent. 

But the mammal was a baby for a while. Its 
mother nourished it. At birth it was not fully 
developed but changed and grew just as a baby 
today changes in more ways than size alone. 
At birth the brain was smaller than later on. 
The time had come when a creature could de¬ 
velop its mind. 

For countless ages the mammals had been the 
underdogs in an age of reptiles. They changed 
somewhat and fitted themselves for the life they 
had to lead. They saved themselves by their 
quickness and their brains for the time that 
was to come when they would rule the earth in 
place of the reptiles. At last they became some¬ 
thing more than just a few scattered animals— 
they were a class by themselves, looking like 
nothing else in the world, acting like no other 
animals—a type of their own, and ready to 
start upon their conquest of the world. 


How did mam¬ 
mals prepare for 
their conquest? 


86 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


How did the 
mammals get 
ahead of them 
selves? 


As soon as the earth was free of the giant 
monsters of the reptile family the mammals 
began to develop very fast. Great beasts arose. 
But as they grew they lost the most valuable 
thing they had. Their brains stood still and 
did not develop with their bodies. The first 
mammals to become creatures of good size did 
not have as much chance of living a long time 
as the small mammals that had lived before 
them. The history of life was repeating itself. 
The first mammals to rule the earth were like 
the giant lords of the reptiles. They were su¬ 
preme because they were big, and not because 
they had brains. And size alone was not 
quite enough. 

In growing big they did not develop in certain 
other ways that were very important to them 
in their struggle to live. Some of them lost 
their swiftness and became awkward, so they 
could not escape if they were pursued. Their 
teeth were the grinding sort that were not suited 
to all kinds of food. They were certain to die 
out in time for they were not well fitted to live. 


THE SMART LITTLE ANIMAI 


87 


They were too large in body. They could not 
feed themselves in a way to keep their great 
bulk alive. They had not enough brain power 
to care for and protect their offspring. If it had 
not been for other animals that did not grow 
so large, and developed more sensibly the whole 
line of mammals would have vanished. 

One of these great stupid beasts was about the what did some °f 

f 0 T 1 1 1 1 1 1 these mammals 

size or an ox. It had heavy short legs and / 00 ^ 
spreading feet that tell the story of life in a 
swampy place. It had an ugly head which was 
flat on the top and seemed almost a part of the 
body itself. It had teeth like the tusks of a boar. 

Another stood seven feet high and had 
several pairs of horns, some of which were eight 
or ten inches high. Its legs were like young 
tree trunks, straight and thick. It was perhaps 



88 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


Who were the 
Invaders that came 
to stay? 


most nearly like the modern elephant. Its 
teeth were curved like sabers, or else spear 
shaped. It was well armored with its horns 
and its tusks and its great size, but it had a tiny 
brain. The more intelligent animals about it 
marched on to future life, while these stupid 
animals soon perished. 

The Stone Book tells us of an invading host 
of new mammals that are called modern 
mammals because they are the direct ancestors 
of so many of the animals of our own world 
today. Some of them were the forefathers of 
the hoofed animals. They were the ancestors 
of the even-toed horses and rhinoceroses, and 
the uneven-toed camels, deer and swine. In 
this group were the ancient mammoths and 
mastodons, members of the elephant family. 
There were pouch-bearing animals that were to 


Great horned mammals came that were too big and 
stupid to continue life 



THE SMART LITTLE ANIMAL 


have kangaroos and oppossums for their de¬ 
scendants. There were toothless sloths, of 
which the armadillo is a connection. Then, 
too, there were winged creatures like the bat; 



The Irish El\ was of tremendous size with great 
branching antlers 


gnawing animals that became rats, mice and 
hares; flesh-eaters that later were to branch out 
as dogs, cats, bears, seals; and whales and sea 
cows; and countless others. 

Finally, and most important of all, came a 
group called Primates, meaning First among 
all things, and this group included moneys, apes 
and Man himself. 




9° 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What happened to 
the little horse? 


The two most interesting stories of the mod¬ 
ern mammals are the tales of the development 
of the elephant and the horse. The stories of 
the other mammals are stories that follow the 
same pattern. They show that step by step the 
creatures became more highly developed 
through the ages. It is a fascinating thing to 
watch the changes and the resemblances in one 
family as we trace them down through the 
long years. 

The first record of the horse is from a fossil 
that gives us a picture of a little animal that 
must have looked like a toy steed. It was only 
about twelve inches high. Its other measure¬ 
ments would lead us to think it was about the 
size of a fox terrier. It had four toes on its 
front feet and three in back. It did not have 
the graceful long neck that later horses had. 
Its head and neck were short. It had an arched 
back that made it less clumsy than the other 
mammals that had backs that did not curve. 

But the little horse was to change into a 
higher form. It began to grow larger as ages 


THE SMART LITTLE ANIMAL 


9i 


went on, and its legs became longer and more 
slender. The second stage shows that its teeth 
changed somewhat so that it could graze better. 



The first horses were not much larger than fox terriers 
and had four toes 


It lost a front toe so both front and hind feet 
had but three toes. It had started on its way 
to become a steed for men to ride upon. It had 
to pass through many more stages before it 
reached its present stage. With each new stage 


9 2 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What is the 
elephant's history? 


it changed. Its toes grew smaller and finally 
disappeared, except one great toe on each foot 
—the hoof. Soon it was as large as a wolf, then 
a sheep, and so on until finally it became the 
large animal of today. Of course, each one of 
these changes took many, many years, and 
countless horses lived and died in the gradual 
process of change. 

“The elephant, with mighty tread 
This strange procession fitly led.” 

August Lamed* 

If it were not for the elephant we would have 
no idea of what a great beast looked like in pre¬ 
historic times. The elephants, since the death 
of the dinosaurs, lead the kingdom of beasts in 
size, sharing honors with the whale. There is 
something about great size which captures the 
interest of us all. There is something awe¬ 
inspiring in the sight of a creature so many times 
bigger than ourselves. 

The ancestors of the true elephants lived in 
Africa. They walked on four feet and stood 

*Anthology “Poetry’s Plea for Animals,” Lothrop, Lee and Shepherd. 



THE SMART LITTLE ANIMAL 


93 


about three feet high at the shoulders. Their 
thick necks were long so they could put their 
heads down to the ground. Their heads were 
not like those of the elephants we know, for 



The ancestors of the elephant had long nec\s but their 
trunks and tus\s were short 


they had the shortest kind of a trunk and tusks. 
But they had a good brain, and it is not surpris¬ 
ing that they became important later. Just as 
the horses grew bigger and did most of their 
changing in their feet, the elephants grew bigger 



94 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


and developed the great jaws that were to 
support their trunks. 

There is a page missing in the history of the 
elephant, and no one knows just what happened 
to the elephants for a long period. But all 
during this time the lower jaw must have been 
growing. Fossils of these later elephants tell 
us that they had enormous jaws and the begin¬ 
nings of trunks. 

During the stage when the elephants were 
developing there were some curious creatures 
of this family. None of them have lasted. 
One was called the Dinotheres, which means 
terrible. These animals had long sloping faces 
and downward curved jaws with tusks. They 
were giants in size. The mastodons were early 
members of the elephant’s family. They were 
from seven to nine feet high and stockier than 
the elephant. Some of them had shaggy hair 
of a dark, golden brown color. Another mem¬ 
ber of the family was the mammoth, with its 
woolly coat to protect it from the cold Arctic 
climate. This mammoth has been seen by 


THE SMART LITTLE ANIMAL 


95 


men, for marvelous specimens were frozen in 
the soil and the ice itself. 

The direct ancestors of living elephants are 
not known because no fossil mastodon or 



The mastodon was related to the elephant and had 
long tus\s and a long trun\ 


mammoth yet discovered agrees perfectly with 
the elephants of today. 

Certain mammals far back at the beginning 
of their existence, turned to the water for their 



9 6 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What happened 
to the mammals 
that li\ed the 
water? 


What happened to 
the mammals that 
li\ed to climb 
trees? 


homes instead of the land. They grew into 
great fish-like shapes, tremendous in size. 
These were the far-distant forefathers of whales. 
No one knows why they turned to salt waters, 
but they have stayed there ever since and are 
now so completely sea animals, though they 
descended from land forms, that if they are 
taken out of the water they die. 

Other mammals were well-fitted for a tree¬ 
living life. To walk along the branches, these 
mammals had to be very agile. Some held on 
to the bark by digging their sharp claws into it. 
Others grasped the branch between the four 
fingers and the thumb or the four smaller toes 
and the big toe. The sense of sight rather than 
smell was the highly developed sense in this 
tree-climbing mammal known as a primate. 
Ages and ages after the first tree-climbing 
mammal, rose the branch of monkeys which are 
such an amusing and intelligent type of 
creature. The monkey walks on four feet like 
his distant ancestors, but he can sit on his 
haunches. Grasping a branch in his tree home 


THE SMART LITTLE ANIMAL 


97 


was perhaps the beginning of the monkey’s use 
of his front feet as hands. With the hands and 
with good eyes and a fine brain these tree-living 



The tree-living mammals soon became of the highest 
types of animals 


mammals became one of the highest types 
among animals. 



9 8 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What happened 
because the ape 
was bigger than 
the monkey? 


Why was the 
ground-walking 
ape important? 


About the time that monkeys made their 
appearance, fossils tell us of another form that 
were perhaps descended from somewhat the 
same type of mammal as the monkeys were. 
This form is the ape. The most important 
thing about the ape was its size. 

The monkeys were light enough to run along 
the branches of the trees without danger of fall¬ 
ing, but the heavy apes could not let all their 
weight fall upon the small limbs of the tree. 
So they acquired a strange way of traveling 
through the forests. They swung themselves 
from limb to limb. And so were in an upright 
position most of the time instead of on all fours. 
This started the marvelous possibility of an up¬ 
right position on the ground. 

The higher forms of apes began to return 
more and more to the ground. They probably 
walked poorly. The ape was stooped and its 
arms were too long because they had been used 
to swinging on trees for a long time. This 
walking ape plays one of the most important 
roles in the whole cycle of life. 


Chapter IX 


THE COMING OF MAN 

T HIS is a question that scientists ask one an¬ 
other time and again. No one has settled 
the matter as yet. One of the most important 
finds that has been discussed as the “missing 
link” is the skeleton of a man-like creature 
which scientists call the Java “ape-man.” The 
remains were discovered in Java. They consist 
of the top of a skull, three teeth and a thigh 
bone. Do they belong to an ape or an early 
form of man? Anyone who attempts to read a 
story of the beginning of man from this small 
part of a skeleton would seem to be attempting 
something impossible. And yet certain facts can 
be found out. The size of the thigh bone tells us 
that the creature was the size of human beings. 
Its shape tells us that it walked erectly. The 
top of the skull shows a brain larger than any 
found in any known ape, but a brain much 


Has the missing 
lin\ between ape 
and man been 
found? 


99 


100 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


What is the 
“dawn man?” 


What was the 
Heidelberg jaw 
li\e? 


lower than that of men. The forehead is lower 
than a man’s and the ridges above the eyes are 
more massive than any known man’s. 

In Sussex, England, some workmen digging 
came upon the skull and jaw of a man-like 
creature that has been named the “dawn man.” 
The brain is more highly developed than the 
Java ape man but far less than the brain devel¬ 
opment of Europeans of today. The speech 
centers are developed as they were in the Java 
ape man and the brow is low. The jaw is very 
ape-like. There was no jaw found with the 
Java ape-man so they cannot be compared. It 
is a chinless jaw like that of a chimpanzee. If 
this creature had the mind of a man it probably 
had a jaw and face that was yet to change into 
the form that we know now. 

Finally a jaw was found more like a human 
jaw. Near Heidelberg in Germany, the sands 
gave up a jaw with teeth that were more human 
than they were ape-like. The jaw was more 
powerful than our jaws but it too was chinless 
like the jaw of the dawn man. 


THE COMING OF MAN 


IOI 


In China the skull of the “Peking Man” was 
unearthed. For several months geologists 
worked to remove it from the mass of hard rock 
in which it was embedded. Dentist’s drills and 
other very delicate tools were used to cut away 
the rock. The “Peking Man’s” skull was dis¬ 
covered in a quarry near the old capital of 
China. It has been considered by some author¬ 
ities to be the oldest fossil of man unearthed 
thus far. 

The skull showed the same heavy ridges as 
those found in the other primitive skeletons of 
man. 

The skeletons of early cave men tell us of a 
man who walked with a slight stoop as the apes 
did. His knees were bent. Other skeletons 
of his kind were found. These people were 
apparently short and sturdy, the men about five 
feet three inches tall and the women four or five 
inches shorter. Their heads were narrow and 
they had bony ridges above their eyes, some¬ 
thing like the apes. They had broad noses and 
a long upper lip caused by a protruding jaw. 


Who is the 
“Peking Man?” 


Who was the last 
of the men who 
bore the mar\ of 
the ape? 


102 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


How do men 
follow the same 
lines of progress 
as forms of life? 


Who was the 
U true man?” 


They had huge chewing muscles and no chins. 
Their heads were bent forward on their chests. 

Skeletons appear to tell of a man who took 
over the land from the last of these men who 
bore the mark of apes in their manner of walk¬ 
ing and in their appearance. This new type 
of man was almost the same as men of today. 
His brain was of the human type. The ridged 
brows and the sloping low foreheads had dis¬ 
appeared and his teeth did not protrude. He is 
called the true man because his body follows the 
outlines of the human body as we know it today. 

Just as we find human beings branching 
out in many ways, so men can be divided 
into many races. The countless forms of fish 
and reptiles and amphibians showed that each 
new development was likely to form a new 
type. Man developed in the same way. Be¬ 
longing to the great unit of life called the 
Mammals, he is a long step from the “smart 
little animal.” 


Chapter X 


THE CHAINING OF THE ANIMALS 


“Men were on earth while climates slowly swung. 
Vanning wide zones to heat and cold, and long 
Subsidence turned great continents to sea, 

And seas dried up, dried up interminably, 

Age a]ter age; enormous seas were dried 
Amid wastes of land . And the last monsters died!* 


— ]ac\ Collins Squire * 



ITH the death of the dinosaurs, those 


▼V brutish monsters of the old world, the 
animals began to lose their power. A steady 
decline of animal life began that has continued 
ever since. The early passing of the animals 
was caused by great climate changes as well as 
old age and disease. 

The greatest climate changes of all were the 
long periods of cold in a time called the Age of 
Ice. Great ice sheets came down and blotted 


‘From “Poetry’s Plea for Animals,” Frances E. Clarke, Lothrop, Lee and 
Shepherd Co., Boston. 


Why did the 
animals lose their 
power? 


103 



104 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


out many races of animals. Warmer periods 
followed and the ice sheets retreated. Life 
began again only to be killed when the ice sheets 
came again. Four times the glaciers covered 
Europe, wiping out life like some giant cold 
hand. Many creatures fled southward but 
most of them were killed. But man remained. 
Because he was intelligent he knew how to take 
care of himself and he was able to survive the 
terrors and destruction of nature. The animals 
that did remain had lost some of their power 
in their long struggle to keep alive. The 
coming of man was the last blow to them. 
Man was their mortal enemy! Only two ways 
were open to the wild creatures—to submit and 
become domestic animals and slaves of men or 
to be hunted for the rest of their days. 

Thus the passing of wild animals is to come 
about. It is true that some remain—but they 
are poor creatures compared with the glorious 
ancestors they descended from. The most 
thrilling of the brutes that still exist are the 
elephants, but they are rapidly being killed 


THE CHAINING OF THE ANIMALS 105 


off. Only two species remain. The wildest 
creatures—lions and leopards and other fero¬ 
cious beasts of the jungle and forest are becom¬ 
ing fewer in number. They could not become 
tame. It seems perhaps that it is better for 
them to die in the tangled gloom of deep woods 
than to walk the streets of men in safety. 



What of the 
future? 


10 6 HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 

“The old order changeth yielding place to 
new.” Does this mean that man, too, must 
leave his place of honor and submit to some 
greater creature than himself. We cannot 
know. Like the amphibian that had no hint 
of a life to come as it lay in its stupid half-dead 
state, man cannot see through the mists of the 
future. But he is not very much afraid that 
any other lord will take his place. He has the 
gift that the smart little animal gave to him— 
his brain. Like a magic weapon, it shields him 
from harm by showing him the dangers that 
threaten him, and like a crown of glory it re¬ 
moves him from all other creatures in this world 
of life. 


APPENDIX 
































THE AGES OF THE EARTH 

The Nuclear Stage—The earth was hurled out of the 
sun, a mass of gas and fire. 

The Stages of Growth—Volcanic action caused by pres-, 
sure created heat inside the cold earth and gravity in¬ 
creased so that the earth could hold atmosphere and 
water. Oceans and continents were formed and life 
began. 

ARCHEOZOIC AGE 

Period of very ancient times when life appears to have 
been present though it left few records. Certain 
Archean rocks have been estimated to be 1,500,000,000 
years old. 

PROTEROZOIC AGE 

Sometimes called the Age of Primitive Marine Inverte¬ 
brates. A period of very early sea life which left a very 
imperfect record as the creatures were probably too soft 
or tiny to create well marked fossil impressions or forms. 
An age when rock systems formed extensively. 

PALEOZOIC AGE 

Cambrian Period—began about 550,000,000 B. C.* 

Life in the waters, rise of shelled animals, jelly-fishes, 
corals, starfishes, molluscs, trilobites, shrimp-like forms. 

* Geologists several years ago adopted a time table of the ages 
of the earth based upon Barrell’s calculations of the radioactivity 
composition of uranium found in the rocks. The figures given here 
are from this time table. 


109 



no 


HOW THE WORLD BEGAN 


Nothing known of land life. Some vegetation may have 
existed. 

Ordovician Period—began about 480,000,000 B. C. 

The first of the armored fish with backbones of cartilage 
material rather than bone. Rise of woody plants at close 
of period. 

Silurian Period—began about 390,000,000 B. C. 

Appearance of first scorpions. Rise of lung fish and 
development of the armored fish so that they closely 
resembled the true fish which followed in the next age. 

Devonian Period—began about 350,000,000 B. C. 
Fish develop so highly, period often called Age of 
Fishes. The first amphibians or land vertebrates de¬ 
velop. The first known land flora; ferns, seed-bearing 
ferns, rushes. 

CARBONIFEROUS AGE OR LATE 
PALEOZOIC 

Mississippian Period—began about 300,000,000 B. C. 
Rise of sharks. Great age of coal plants begins, soft, 
spongy woods, seed-bearing trees and shrubs of all kinds. 

Pennsylvanian Period—began about 250,000,000 B. C. 

Rise of primitive reptiles and insects developing to enor¬ 
mous sizes. Vegetation reaches greatest size and variety 
in this period. Extensive coal swamps. 

Permian Period—began about 215,000,000 B. C. 

Primitive reptiles developed into lizard forms and long- 


APPENDIX 


hi 


spined types. Insects became smaller and more like 
modern forms. Primitive conifers, modern ferns. 

MESOZOIC AGE 

Triassic Period—began about 190,000,000 B. C. 
Amphibians on the decline. Reptiles developed into 
dinosaurs on land and ichthyosaurs in the sea. First 
appearance of mammals of small size. Plant life evolved 
a new group called the cycads, a fern-like tree. 

Jurassic Period—began about 155,000,000 B. C. 
Dinosaurs attain greatest size. Appearance of first flying 
reptiles, the pterosaurs. Rise of first bird. Sea life of 
leading importance. Great sea-serpents descended from 
land reptiles, called the plesiosaurs. Mammals the size 
of rats. Appearance of butterflies. Moderate sized trees. 

Cretaceous Period—began about 95,000,000 B. C. 

Reptiles nearing extinction. Waning of the dinosaurs. 
Development of Plesiosaurs to greatest size and strange 
forms. Birds developed more highly, especially those 
with water habits. Mammals of higher type coming into 
being as the pouched mammal. Appearance of flower¬ 
ing plants. 

CENOZOIC AGE 

Paleocene Period— short period intervening 

Rise of archaic mammals. 

Eocene Period—began about 55,000,000 B. C. 
Mammals developed from “pouch” type to higher ranks 
and larger sizes. Archaic mammals disappeared by close 


112 


APPENDIX 


of period and primitive forms of hoofed creatures devel¬ 
oped into horses, tapirs, rhinoceroses. Small flesh-eaters, 
insect-eaters, and herbivora. Rodents appeared. Pio¬ 
neer whale forms. Birds of modern aspect. Forests 
developed. 

Oligocene Period—began about 35,000,000 B. C. 
Rise of higher mammals. Modern types of animals 
developed. Primates were on earth; true whales in ex¬ 
istence, insects well established. Vegetation luxuriant. 

Miocene Period—began about 19,000,000 B. C. 
Notable for development of horses. Ancestor of chim¬ 
panzee, gorilla, and man thought to be in existence. 

Pliocene Period—began about 7,000,000 B. C. 
Anthropoid apes appeared and deserted Northern coun¬ 
tries owing to falling temperature. The period of the 
Java ape-man. 

QUATERNARY AGE 

Pleistocene Period—began about 1,000,000 B. C. 
The glacial period, marked by migrations of life south¬ 
ward and extinction of great mammals. Cave-men 
developed and became hunters. 

Present Age—began about 50,000 B. C. 

Rise of world civilization and the development of mental 
rather than physical life. The Age of Man. 




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